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Great Expectations by Dickens Essay

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Great Expectations Comment on Dickens' use of setting focusing on the opening graveyard scene and the scenes with Miss Havisham set in the
Satis house.

GCSE Coursework 'Great Expectations'

Comment on Dickens' use of setting focusing on the opening graveyard scene and the scenes with Miss Havisham set in the Satis house

As a skilled writer Dickens has chosen a perfect setting in which corresponds to the involvement of his characters. The dark isolated graveyard associates with death, and provides a backdrop that is very similar to the appearance of a criminal, in the society in Dickens' time. Dickens describes the marshes as being a dark, flat wilderness.
This creates the opportunity to become lost and isolated, it
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The beacon and the gibbet are the only things that are verticle and standing, as they are very important and have to stand out. This is because the beacons light guides in good people who will be saved from the distant savage lair, criminals being the savage beasts. The gibbet is the place where criminals will go, and they will not be saved.
This, in Dickens' view, is what will happen between the two groups of people. If Pip does steel he will go to the gibbet.

Dickens cleverly associates the graveyard with the dark, mist and the rushing winds. These provide the right atmosphere that corresponds to the gloomy, course, grey appearance of Magwitch, a criminal. Magwitch is described as being a fearful man, with a terrible voice and shuddering body. This is Dickens' view on what a criminal was like in the society in the Victorian times.

Dickens puts across the idea of going across the marshes is a path you wouldn't want to take as it hurts, it's unpleasant, it's wild and cold, it's not attactive and it's lonely. This also means that being a criminal is a path you wouldn't want to take for the same reasons.

When Magwitch turns Pip upside down, it's like Pips life being turned around. From being a well brought up boy to a criminal. Dickens wrote this to show the idea of the change in Pip's behaviour and manner towards criminality. The appearance of Magwitch, cut
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